HOMEWRECKER {18+}

13

O L I V I A

MATURE AUDIENCE.

A little over a year has passed, and the only light in the dark room exists because of the burning candles. The twenty-four candles on the table in the middle of the room awoke the light.

The twenty-four candles on the birthday cake also silenced the room, which had been filled with agonizing screams seconds earlier.

"Happy birthday to me.. Happy birthday to me.. Happy birthday to me.."

I slowly clapped my hands together with gloves on, singing in a low voice happy birthday to myself.

I wasn't completely alone, my shadows were with me as I sang in the darkness, gazing down at the cake with lights.

Specifically, the shadows of my past were with me in the cold, freezing room because we were underground, with only four cement walls around us.

I ignored the other person in the basement and stared down at the candles I had lit on the cake. I was celebrating my birthday, which was at the beginning of autumn, in September.

Twenty-four years old.

I have lived twenty-four years, and I loathed every second of it. I didn't understand at first how I could have made it this far?

I was homeless, bruised, and dead because of the moment I ran away from the foster home. My mother marked the documents pronouncing me dead, even if it was another person who had died freezing to death and not me.

But she didn't want a daughter with a living beating heart. She wanted a dead daughter, and she got it.

I needed to survive and work in shady places where they never questioned my identity or requested information about me, like the convenience store I used to work at or the bar in a dark alley.

How did I make it? The words repeated in my mind.

My mother, who abused me and stole my life away, placed me in a rough foster home where they terrorized me, and I always needed to keep my door locked at all times.

It was like I was living inside a survival game, that's all my life has been.

How did I make it? The words repeated in my mind again.

"Sweetie, your bleeding back is mommy's masterpiece."

"Sweetie, I love you so much, I could rip your back open, dry all the blood from you and pour it into my art."

"Sweetie, don't tell anyone about what mommy did, or else your father will end up like your grandmother. Dead."

"Sweetie, go and sit on that older man's lap. He will show you the attention your father can't."

How did I make it? The words repeated in my mind for the third time.

At the end of it all, I knew how I had made it this far despite everything.

The thirst for revenge that kept me up at night, and the yearning to destroy my mother's life, the same way she had destroyed mine.

I tilted my head up from the lightened cake and stared at the person who was sitting with its back against the cement wall.

Hands tied, check. Ankles tied, check.

I stared into the person's mind, body and soul as I continued to sing in a low voice.